Horror film sensationalizes UCSB tragedy

The release of a trailer for the horror film Del Playa early this month has outraged thousands who consider it outrightly disrespectful of the May 2014 killings that took place in Isla Vista, California. The film mirrors the shooting at the University of California, Santa Barbara, inadvertently fictionalizing the incident. A petition on Change.org calls for solidarity among the film’s opponents to stop its release in theaters worldwide. The petition has gained about 28,000 supporters, all of whom seek “to educate the filmmakers about the seriousness behind gun violence tragedies and “to halt the release of the insensitive and untimely Del Playa film.” By successfully sensationalizing tragedy into cheap entertainment, Del Playa outrightly disrespects and diminishes the Isla Vista killings, justifying the petition’s purpose.

The movie depicts a distraught college student-turned-killer who has faced rejection from women and isolation from male peers. In Isla Vista, the street where Del Playa takes place, Santa Barbara City College student Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14 others before taking his own life. According to his many YouTube videos, in which he pledges “to take to the streets of Isla Vista” and “slay every single person” he sees, Rodger was resentful of his inability to interact with the opposite sex. The similarities between the two narratives of a love-scorned psychopath are more than an act of cinematic allusion.

Film producer Josh Berger maintains that though “there is the connection of Santa Barbara, this film is not about Elliot Rodger. The fictional character in the film is not meant to portray anyone in particular.” But even the title Del Playa, a reference to a street in Isla Vista, associates too strongly with the beaches of Santa Barbara. To suggest that audiences will not associate this film with the Isla Vista incident is reductive. Regardless of the film’s accuracy in portraying Elliot Rodger and his victims, the film appropriates the Isla Vista shooting at the expense of survivors.

The film’s content is arguably its greatest detriment. By trivializing the Isla Vista shooting, Del Playa turns shooter and student Elliot Rodger into an archetype of a pariah and college student who is rejected by sorority girls. In doing so, the film glorifies the actions of the killer while delegitimizing the trauma felt by survivors.

Audiences might perceive the antagonist to be Rodger, as the studio intends. This characterization rewrites the story, glorifying the killer as a man of power and as a star of huge Hollywood blockbuster. As opposed to leaving his name to die in the past, the film will immortalize him in cinema history at the expense of the UCSB community.

When a film has emotionally disturbing content and chooses to dramaticize violence instead of condemn it, it intentionally desensitizes the viewer in the process. Such desensitization can make viewers less empathetic towards real suffering.

Less than a year and a half after the Isla Vista shooting, the release of this film is, above all else, untimely and in poor taste, making a commodity out of lives lost and a mockery out of the lives stuck in mourning.

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated Elliot Rodger attended UCSB. Rodger attended Santa Barbara City College. The Daily Trojan regrets the error.